KK Correspondence, December 1953

Translation

KK Correspondence, No. 15
Published December 1, 1953

KK FORUM: MY PERVERSION
By Sakura Eiichi

In the KK Forum of issue eleven, Mr. Hanajiri wrote an essay entitled “The Sadist and the Masochist.” I would like to offer a few thoughts about it. First of all, after reading his essay I agree with his position in principle. As someone who has experienced both sides, I felt that he had accurately pointed out a blind spot of which I myself had not been conscious. Even so, there is one point I would like to add.

In the July issue, Hamura Kyōko also wrote to Shida Aoko, confessing that when she sees a cute, feminine student with a sweater rising firmly over the chest from near the brow, she feels a sadistic impulse, although she believes herself unmistakably to be a masochist. I myself can see a feminine young man in passing and suddenly be seized by the desire to torment him with all my strength. Yet when I see a beautiful woman I can just as suddenly think, “I want to be trampled beneath this woman’s legs and beaten unconscious with a whip held in those white hands.”

At such moments I cannot help remembering days that have passed. More than once I have asked myself: am I a masochist, or am I a sadist? I tell myself that sadism and masochism are two sides of the same thing, and perhaps that is enough. Yet I still question whether my longing for masochism and my urge toward sadism can be explained completely by the theory that women wish to control men by a force that is not simple physical violence, while men wish to submit before a woman by something other than physical violence.

I feel only that this deserves further thought. At present I do not possess enough evidence to refute his position as a whole. Perhaps the two tendencies simply begin from different points. The movements of the human heart and the flashes of feeling cannot be divided neatly by reason alone. Through future correspondence and association with fellow members, I hope to discuss these matters from both sadistic and masochistic positions and further test my own ideas.

A WEALTHY MAN’S CONFESSION: THE BIRTH OF A MASOCHIST, PART FIVE
By Minemura Sakichi

Tsuyako, who until then had been an innocent, refined young wife of good breeding, fell in my eyes from that day onward. Having betrayed my pure feelings and made her husband drink the bitterest of draughts, she seemed to deserve punishment. Yet I could not divorce her merely for that reason. To be frank, I also had my own social position to consider. If, immediately after marrying, I had acted violently toward her, I wondered what the world would say. I therefore did not initially think of tormenting her mind.

But the weak point in my own character seems to have surfaced under the shock. If other rivals had looked at our marriage only from the outside, not one of them could have imagined this private inner life. My public position made certain actions impossible, but there was another truth as well: I had a powerful attachment to her body itself.

I did not know whether her heart was truly turned toward me. Perhaps she had been dazzled by my social position and practical power and had simply followed me with her eyes closed. Meanwhile the companies under my control continued to prosper. I placed the greater part of my fortune in stable enterprises and entrusted more speculative, high-profit ventures to trusted subordinates. People probably imagined that I was surrounded by new pleasures. The truth was almost the opposite. I may have been drawn ever more strongly by Tsuyako’s strange, perverse power.

Imagine discovering that the beautiful wife you loved had been taken by another without your knowledge. What would you do? I did not immediately hand my anger over to another person or act in haste. There was no need. I could take my time. The wife already in my hands could be made into the object of my desires in whatever manner I chose.

[Several lines in the scan are too degraded for a reliable continuous transcription. The passage continues with jealousy, possessiveness toward Tsuyako’s body, fantasies of punishment, and the narrator’s gradual recognition that his desire to punish and his desire to submit are intertwined.]

SENRYU OF TORMENT
By Segawa Shizuko

A short group of comic erotic senryu follows. Several lines are too blurred to translate confidently. The poems play on domestic life, women’s tears, torment, and the reversal of ordinary household roles.

THE STORY OF THE NEW YEAR ISSUE’S SUPPRESSION
By the Editor

Readers of KK Correspondence may have wondered whether the editors intended simply to pause publication after the New Year issue. That is not what happened. A problem involving official suppression arose in connection with the New Year issue.

From the editorial side we have always tried to be careful about obscenity, examining material before and after printing. Yet the word “obscene” is itself ambiguous. Judgment changes according to the person looking, the age, the social position of the observer, and the culture in which the judgment is made.

As editors we cannot permit violations of publication law or other regulations to bring trouble upon even a portion of our readers. On the other hand, if we shrink completely inside the narrowest legally permitted limits, this publication loses its purpose. Articles dealing with the relationship between abnormal sexuality and crime, for example, are not printed in order to encourage crime. They are materials for the study and understanding of unusual sexual tendencies.

This is a difficult boundary. The police and censors do not always interpret matters in the same way as editors or readers. What is perfectly ordinary to one person may strike another as intolerable. We ask readers to understand that the task is to continue publishing without surrendering the very subject that makes the magazine necessary.

[The following paragraphs recount details of the printing and censorship process. Several terms and names are too indistinct in the scan for reliable reconstruction.]

POSE OF PLEASURE IN TORMENT
Model: Kawabata Tanako

A photograph presents a woman reclining on the floor with her legs folded, posed to suggest languor, vulnerability, and eroticized discomfort.

CORRESPONDENCE FROM FELLOW MEMBERS

“I have now seen the November issue. Among all the magazines being published, I was astonished to find one as unusual as this. I was especially interested in the photographs. I intend to become a reader from this month onward. I wonder whether a woman such as myself ought to write about such things, but I would very much like to know how many women read the magazine and whether there are women who share these tastes.”

Another correspondent writes that ordinary relationships do not provide the intense excitement he seeks. While turning the pages of a magazine in a bookshop, he saw a photograph of a bound woman hoisted up and gagged, writhing and gasping. The sight produced the sensation that all the blood in his body had reversed direction. He realized that he possessed the same sort of disposition and adds that he is also interested in being bound or tormented by someone of the same sex. He asks for correspondence from people with similar tastes.

A third reader explains that he learned of this world through Kitan Club and thereafter bought as many old and new issues as he could find. He does not want his wife to know of the interest, but he seeks powerful physical stimulation and a discreet relationship in which the partners meet when they wish and separate without complications. He expresses a preference for a female correspondent.

Other short letters ask for photographs, illustrations, accounts of methods of restraint, and introductions to like-minded readers. Several addresses and real names are printed, but portions are too faint to transcribe with confidence.

WOMAN TORMENTS WOMAN, PART ONE

After a much-awaited photographic session in November, the contributors finally attempted a subject they had previously failed to realize: one woman tormenting another. The photographs show a female model being handled and restrained by another woman. In side view, rope presses across the chest and arms, and the narrow lines of the body are emphasized by the restraint.

The text stresses that a photograph alone cannot fully reproduce the atmosphere. There is hesitation between the woman who torments and the woman who is tormented, an awareness of the other’s breathing, and an ambiguity between acting and genuine embarrassment. The female body is treated not merely as an object tied by a man, but as something exposed to the gaze and hands of another woman.

A WOMAN WEARING A THINKING GAG
Drawing by Naruyama Nōhei

The accompanying drawing shows a woman with cloth or rope at the mouth and restraint around the body. The short text observes that rope bondage does not mean only that a woman is passively tormented. Through rope, muscle, posture, and fantasy, the bound woman herself can participate in constructing an erotic scene. Restraint accentuates the soft curves associated with the female body.

SELF-ABUSIVE EROTIC PLEASURE: INJECTION AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR DISEMBOWELMENT
By Hagikawa Tarō, Shizuoka

Through your magazine I have learned that there are many people in Japan who share my inclinations, and the realization fills me with emotion. This is what may be called the world of masochism. Since boyhood I have been attracted to women’s self-torment and particularly to the idea of seppuku.

I would therefore like to tell Shida Aoko and the editor about one of my own methods of self-torment. It is a way of approaching the sensation associated with cutting into the abdomen without actually doing so: injection into the abdomen.

I ordinarily use vitamin injections. Hormones and some other preparations use longer needles and may produce hard lumps, so I consider vitamins preferable. I bind the upper and lower abdomen with cotton cloth and use a relatively thick intramuscular needle. The needle is first placed against the skin. At first I push only enough to make the skin tremble, then gradually drive it deeper.

As with imagined seppuku, the skin may first be softened by rubbing. Pinching the flesh lightly and inserting the needle at an angle creates a different sensation. There is a peculiar ache in imagining that a blade or needle is entering one’s own flesh. For me, this gives a distinctive pleasure that can serve as a substitute for cutting the abdomen.

[The remaining lines give additional procedural and photographic detail. Several words are illegible and are not reconstructed here.]

TICKLE TORMENT, PART TWO
By a contributor whose name is uncertain

At a recent burlesque performance I saw an unusual scene of “tickle torment.” A woman was restrained and tickled beneath the arms and around the thighs. The way she twisted in an attempt to escape made the scene more effective as torment.

I later saw a similar idea in a Tokyo burlesque show. The woman was restrained with her hands behind her and tickled at the feet, sides, and throat. Tickling differs from pain, but when a person cannot escape it becomes a genuine form of torment. There are many possible devices in the art of torment, and tickling deserves a place among them.

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS

Notices follow for special members, people seeking correspondence, readers wishing to exchange photographs, and people asking the editors to introduce them to others with similar interests.

CALL FOR CONFESSIONAL MANUSCRIPTS

Readers are invited to submit personal experiences that are difficult to express publicly. Anonymous or pseudonymous accounts are acceptable. The editors say that such testimony may become valuable documentary material for the future.

WOMAN TORMENTS WOMAN, PART TWO

The photographic sequence continues. At the moment one woman gives the signal, the restrained woman is pressed against a support and made to twist and strain. The woman doing the tormenting watches the other’s reactions and uses her hands and implements to prolong the scene. Even when the restrained woman begs to be forgiven, the torment is not immediately stopped.

The text emphasizes the particular embarrassment created by two women confronting one another in these roles. The scene is neither exactly the same as male domination nor merely theatrical posing. The women’s mutual awareness, hesitation, and bodily proximity give it a different tension.

IROHANI SUPPLEMENTAL EXTRACT

Three photographs provide supplemental examples of positioning and methods of torment. The captions describe changes in posture and the relationship between the woman applying the torment and the woman receiving it. Some of the small print is too indistinct for reliable translation.

THE WOMAN I REMEMBER
By Masamizu Takuji
Model: Mizuta Masako

In the depths of night, everyone must sometimes remember a woman once kept hidden in the deepest part of the heart. A woman from youth, a woman whose figure was beautiful, a face or gesture preserved in fragments of memory. My own story is not something grand enough to decorate, but it is one such private memory.

At one time a young woman from a distant branch of my family came to stay with us. She had only recently left a country school and was not yet accustomed to city life. At first I regarded her almost as a younger sister. Gradually, however, I began to look at her young body with an interest I could not explain.

The sight of a young woman’s body, the line of clothing, the accidental glimpse of flesh, and the imagined impression of rope against the skin began to connect themselves in my mind. I found myself constructing scenes of restraint even while behaving toward her outwardly as a relative and guardian.

[The article continues with descriptions of rooms, clothing, bedding, observation of the young woman, and fantasies of restraint. Several lines are too blurred to translate without inventing wording.]

UNTIL I CAME TO DRAW EROTIC PICTURES: REMOVING THE VEIL OF SHAME, PART TWO
By Minamikawa Kazuko

It was a fine household, with many servants and a broad garden whose trees were always carefully tended. The young master who had married into the household and the young mistress appeared to live in enviable comfort. Yet a strange incident began when the mistress suddenly fell ill with her stomach.

One day my elder-sister-like mistress was in the bath. I passed along the corridor and went to check the water. The house stood on high ground and the water pressure was often low. Apparently the bath had become too hot. Startled, she shut off the heat and tried to connect a hose to the well pump.

I threw off the cape I was wearing, opened the glass door, and rushed in. “Sister, I’ll cool it for you. Give me the bucket.”

“No, close it! No!” she cried, shrinking back with a scream as though she might burst into tears. Her panic was so extreme that I could hardly believe this was the composed woman I knew. Trying to remain calm, I repeated, “Hurry, give me the bucket.” But by then I had already seen the secret of her body completely.

That evening she called me to her room. It was an eight-mat Western-style room facing south, and near the window the green branches of a Himalayan cedar were visible. She wore a pink gown and sat on the edge of the bed. The moment I entered she said, “Kazuko, you saw all of my body today, didn’t you?”

She stood, locked the door, and ordered me to sit in the chair before her. I obeyed. “Since you saw me, I’m going to make you pay for it. I’m going to torment you properly,” she said. She moved behind me and blindfolded me with a purple handkerchief.

This is not something I invented. The cloth was thin, and through it I could still perceive the brighter parts of the room as if through a curtain. My embarrassment was intense, yet along with it came another sensation. Being punished by another woman, and being made conscious of my own body through her actions, awakened an interest that ordinary surface life had never revealed to me.

[Several lines describing bodily contact, embarrassment, and the narrator’s awakening attraction toward women are indistinct in the scan and are not silently reconstructed.]

FROM THE EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

KK Correspondence has now been published for more than a year. We regard the present period as one of building a foundation. Our first aim is to deliver every issue reliably to readers. Issue fourteen was delayed somewhat because of printing circumstances, and we apologize. The present issue has also appeared later than the scheduled date, but we intend to improve this.

KK Correspondence is not sold through ordinary bookshops. It is distributed principally to readers and members. As circulation has gradually increased, the November issue was expanded to sixteen pages. We intend to continue improving both the amount and the quality of material.

Readers have sent us many frank suggestions, and wherever possible these have been reflected in the magazine. If there is material you would particularly like to see included, please send your requests without hesitation.

SALES DEPARTMENT NEWS

Notices explain advance-payment procedures, reservations, forthcoming special issues, available merchandise, and shipping arrangements.

SHORT CORRESPONDENCE

Brief notices concern the growing number of members, administrative correspondence, exchanges of photographs and documents, and plans for a discussion meeting on masochistic environments and related subjects.

Publication data:
KK Correspondence, No. 15. Published December 1, 1953. Publisher: Yoshida Minoru. Editor: Shinoda Kyōji. Issued by Akebono Shobō, Sakai, Osaka. Price: 20 yen.